The Azraq - Scourge of the Volcanic Hills The Beastmen - Savage Tribes of the Plainslands The Boglins - Thieves of the Dead Forest The Drakken - Last Survivors of a Bygone Age The Drudges - Servants of the Old Archaens The Drukhs - Ghost-Tribes of the Northern Hills The Golgoths - Slavers of the Wilderlands The Imazi - Hunters of the Savannahlands The Kasir - Nomadic Traders of the Desertlands The Narada - Plant-folk of the Southlands The Ra - Servants of Death The Reavers - Scavengers and Bandits of the Wastelands The Shaka - Eldest of the Wild Tribes The Shan - Golden-skinned Warriors from the East The Talosians - Ancient Automatons The Thrax - Merchants of Destruction The Umar - Savage Conquerers of the North The Undermen - Those who Dwell Below The Vandar - Warriors bred for battle The Virago - Warrior-Women of the Wilderlands The Warloks - Soulless Assassins & Hunters of Wizards The Witchmen - Headhunters of the Junglelands The Yann - Builders and Salvagers

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Already it's possible to see some parallels with the old Talislanta material. What are you looking forward to?

Tim Baker wrote:Other than the famous "no elves" mantra, what makes the Talislanta setting worth playing?

What makes this version worth playing or Talislanta in general?

In general, Talislanta is a weird fantasy setting. Typically it's played high fantasy but there's enough in the broad setting to do a variety of types of games - I've run horror, dungeon crawls, political revolutions (including some guerrilla warfare), pirate themes, picaresque travelogue, and big epic save the world stories.

The old old tag line was indeed no elves. Which is a bit tongue in cheek - there's stuff in Tal that you can squint at and say "eihn, maybe that's an elf" but it's not the same as the oft-called 'standard fantasy' elves or Tolkien inspired elves or even just Western mythologically inspired folklore (elves or no). Instead, Tal draws from ... well, a little bit of everything. There's definite Western inspired fantasy in there as well as bits of other cultures, done sort of as a pastiche.

Tal is built in broad strokes; there's depth in there, but most of it is the illusion of depth. You get a feeling that the world is used and rough and lived in; you get hints of how things are and were and what they might become. But at the same time, things are described in brief. Though the old Cyclopedias had some city maps, most locales are not mapped to that degree. There's plenty of room on the map to stick in your own towns and cities with enough baggage from the text to figure out what's going on there pretty quick.

There've been 5 editions of Talislanta - the first is pretty sparse and was a D&D clone of its day (1987ish). Second ed polished that up and made it its own thing. Third edition got rid of some of the D&D inspired tropes, revamped magic into a variety of Orders (things like Elementalism, Witchcraft, Necromancy, Wizardy, Cartomancy, etc). Fourth polished the magic system into its own thing and collected everything in one Big Blue Book. 5th edition tried to introduce a character creation/path system (as opposed to the earlier archetype system) but had pretty non-existent editing. It's not unusable, but the typos and errors do become troublesome after a while.

This Talislanta book is slightly different. We're not calling it a new edition, though it could be taken that way. This book is set in Tal's distant past and is geared towards a survival and exploration style of play. There's supposed to be rules to take things from the individual to mass combat and back while still staying in a manageable format (I didn't playtest, so I'm not sure how accurate that is). Things are more primitive, geared towards endurance and barbarism and building something from the ruins of the past.

Ideally, it should have enough in it that old fans of Tal can see the underpinnings and bones of what the world will become while still remaining simple enough that folks who have never played Tal before can easily grasp the setting without necessarily having to learn all the baggage of the whole world. As such, the number of playable races was drastically trimmed down and the scope of the world has even narrowed slightly to the very center of the Talislantan continent and the areas immediately surrounding it. There's not a magic system in it (in Tal magic usage was what distinguished civilized societies from more primitive ones {despite some primitive cultures having their own 'primitive' magics}) because all of that was lost in the Fall (what modern Tal calls The Great Disaster). There's still primitive rituals, there's still magical items to be found, but spellcasting isn't really a thing.

This version is basically the GM saying - the world just ended, everyone gets to play a Barbarian, a Ranger, or a Druid without spellcasting. You've got to survive in the wilds against nature, other savage tribes, and try to build something lasting to keep not only yourself, but your friends and family and tribemates alive.

Cool. Hope you like it. There's some amazing artwork going into this new book. SMS has always kept a very firm hand on the art direction for his vision of the game world and it's been a fairly consistent thing across the older editions. Getting new Tal art is something of a bonus for us old fogeys, but in this particular case it's some beautiful and evocative work.

Also! There's three rule-sets to choose from: Standard TAL, D&D 5e, and Open D6... so you can even customize your specific game to what best suits your table.

Or get all 3.

Now, personally, I'd suggest just getting the print edition for the version you're most likely to use and then getting the others as PDF add-ons if you think you'd use them. After all, the setting text is going to be 100% the same no matter what, it's just the rules chapters that are going to change.

In additon to the Talislanta system, D6 system and 5th editon system, it is now available with the Pathfinder system and the Savage World system.

Yep 5 systems to play with.

I saw that, and thought it was cool. While I don't run any of those systems, having more "translations" of the same material helps me understand what's critical to capture the feel of what the designers are going for, and what can be jettisoned when doing a conversion.

This random table driven, focused on usable at the game table nature really appeals to me. I am am very much looking forward to this one. Now there are five versions. D6 (like the old Star Wars game), OGL 5e (similar to Dungeons and Dragons), Talislanta's own system, Pathfinder, and Savage Worlds.

Personally I don't have any interest in PF and SW. I think I'm going to go with OGL 5e because that's a game I already love; the changes they have outlined to make it more Talislanta-ish I think look good.

Angel Tarragon wrote:Is the Kickstarter already over? Looks like I may have missed my opportunity to back it.

Yeah, afraid it just ended the other night.

However, given that pledgemanager hasn't been booted up, I imagine that if you contacted Nocturnal Media https://www.nocturnal-media.com/ and explained that you missed it, they might be able to squeeze you in. No guarantees.